[nc] Newz Crew Program Visits DC!

Submitted by Rafi on Wed, 05/30/2007 - 15:33

Every year, GK's Newz Crew afterschool program visits its partners at the Newshour with Jim Lehrer in an annual DC trip. This year, one of the teens, Anthony, was so inspired by the trip that he decided he wanted to blog about it here on the GK blog. Enjoy!

On Monday 10, 2007 my GK trainers, my fellow monitors and I took a trip to Washington D.C. Our main goal was to visit the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, who help us run NewzCrew.org, and to interview one of their senior correspondents, Ray Suarez.

We also had plans to visit several other places. We arrived in Washington D.C at approximately 9:00 PM, we all went to a restaurant for dinner and after we made our way to the hostel where we stayed. The next day was a very busy one because we had to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the News hour.

When we went to the Museum, they broke us into small groups and we all got a special tour of the Museum. The things we saw were really sad but one thing that I really appreciated was learning about the many unknown people who tried hard to save as many Jews as possible. An example was a Japanese diplomat in Germany, who handed out a bunch of visas to Jews so they would not get exterminated.

One of our fantastic guides at the Holocaust museum speaks about the meaning of the remembrance room

We then took the train which looked very beautiful and the bus to get to the News Hour. At the news hour we got another special tour and had the chance to interview Mr. Suarez. I must say, everything about the News Hour was amazing. I had the chance to see how the news was made and I think it is really cool.

Meghan from the Newshour points to the lights above, which when on raise the temperature in the studio by 40 degrees in ten minutes. Watch out for melting makeup...

The students interview Ray about his experience with book writing, reporting on the end of apartheid, and more.

After the News Hour, we visited the Washington mall and had the chance to learn a lot about the Vietnam war. But during our visit to the Vietnam Memorial, there was a statue of three American soldiers, one was African American, that had a strong effect on me. The looks on their faces showed desperation and that brought a lot of things to mind like how do they feel being survivors of the war when so many people died? Do they value life more than others now? What kind of dreams do they have still about the war? These questions still bother me up to this day.

The next day, we went spent time together in front of the White House for a few, then we took the bus back to New York. Washington D.C was great, I learned a lot of important information like the fact that there were groups of Jews who started to fight the Germans back. I also learned that the there are specific people who decide what the top stories are going to be at the News Hour, I always thought that they just went about what happened first to what happened last. Washington to me was a great experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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